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My Humbly Biased Rookie of the Year Vote for Giovani Bernard

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January 30, 2014
NFL
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The inherent problem with awards season is taking the abstract and making it concrete. Voters take works of art, whether they are feature films or albums, and attempt to crown one of them as “the year’s best.” There’s no quantifiable way of achieving these decisions. Every vote is nothing more than opinion and perception being funneled through humans with biases and agendas, all culminating in the distribution of a few golden statues that are rarely awarded without controversy.

Awards for professional athletes are quite the opposite. There are ample statistical measures for every athlete in every sport. In the modern era, we have more numbers and analytics than John Nash could shake a stick at. Yet, when we attempt to award a player an honor such as “Most Valuable,” we’re then forced to take these concrete qualifiers and apply them to the abstract.

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The Offseason Freeze, A Travelogue Through the NHL: January 22-24

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January 25, 2014
Hockey, Sports
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Courtesy of the Associated Press

College football has been out of my life for two whole Saturdays – this is a problem.

As soon as the garnet and gold confetti littered college football’s high church and Jameis Winston gave his Joel Osteen-like devotional, the 2013 season died while taking the BCS to the depths of the history books with it. The NFL has provided some solace, but it’s season too shall end in ticker tape, trophies and a smattering of product placement. This is my sporting soul’s lull period. January to August is just a slow creep minimally sustained by ‘crootin and coaching carousel story lines. I will watch MLB’s Opening Day with mild fanfare, I’ll research college basketball teams at the last minute come March and the NBA Finals may captivate me, depending on whether or not Kanye West drops another album. Yet, none of this will fully satisfy me until next year’s kickoff in late August.

With that being said, I’ve decided to immerse myself in a sport to pass through the doldrums of the offseason. A sport which, quite frankly, I’ve avoided mostly due to the conditions necessary to facilitate a game. I’m talking about hockey.

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America Gets Sherminated

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January 20, 2014
America, NFL, Sports
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RichardShermanWWELast night, in the second game of a conference championship weekend for the ages, the Seattle Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 23-17, to send themselves to the Super Bowl for the second time in franchise history and, for what it’s worth, the second time in the last decade. Seattle has been an undeniably fun team to watch in the last two years, and particularly this season. The Seahawks have lost at home only once in the Russell HUSTLE BUSTLE Wilson era, in a Week 16 matchup earlier this season to a surprisingly good Arizona Cardinals team, and some fans have even taken to adopting a Phish song as Wilson’s personal entrance music. It is only right that a fun team from the Pacific Northwest, from the city without an NBA franchise, should represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.

Then, Richard Sherman happened.

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Hypothetical Gambling – Mistakes Will Be Made

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January 19, 2014
NFL, Sports
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Sometimes we mess up.

Sometimes we start singing the second verse of “Through the Wire” four bars too early. Sometimes we make promises we can’t keep. Sometimes we put off working on a project or writing a paper or formatting an article on hypothetical gambling until moments before they are due.

Sometimes we post articles on hypothetical gambling with a few spelling/mathematical errors, and don’t even give out winning picks. Read More

Clash of the Titans

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January 15, 2014
NFL, Sports
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This weekend, the AFC-NFC Championship games will feature four teams that started the playoffs as favorites to reach the Super Bowl. It will serve as the penultimate episode of a season that was chock full of intriguing subplots which managed to do nothing but fill up think pieces and conspiracy theories. Teams like the Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles were like the Bob Bensons of the NFL – just something to keep our minds away from the thought of an inevitability. It was nice to see some fresh teams added into the mix after years out of the picture – greetings from Kansas City/Charlotte – but alas, the favorites prevailed, and there is not a Super Bowl dark horse in sight. Not that this is a bad thing. It’s actually quite to the contrary. If last year’s conference championships games were battles of Davids against Goliaths, this is an all-Goliath fest.

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My Worst (Fan) Behavior

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January 3, 2014
College Football, Sports
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“WORST MOTHERFUCKER NEVER LOVED US.”

This is the first line from Drake’s “Worst Behavior.” I have been listening to this song a lot lately because I am one of those motherfuckers who never loved Drake, got a late pass and decided to listen to this album a month ago. This song has stood out to me because it’s Drake’s musical double middle finger salute. It may be counteracted by “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” but still, this song is the hardest I’ve heard by the rapper pejoratively referred to as Young Garnier Fructis by “Ghostface Killah.”

It’s a song that I didn’t see coming, but that’s because I never held any microscope to the former DeGrassi star. I just assumed Drake was going to keep doing Drake things, like sulking sensually. Nope, Drake has a breaking point when he can’t stop thinking about people like me who never thought he did anything other than the aforementioned. “Worst Behavior” is a Twitter rant, a response to being disrespected. It’s Roy Hibbert’s “y’all motherfuckers don’t watch us” set to a trap beat. It was the soundtrack to my attitude on Friday night, when my social media outlets filled with solid orange glee from Clemson fans.

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The 2013 TwH Year in Review Megathread

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December 31, 2013
Pop Culture, Sports
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2013 brought many strange occurrences and changes. From the triumphant, like Jason Collins’ admission of homosexuality, to the tragic, like the Boston Marathon bombings, to the downright necessary, like Pope Francis and the charge toward universal acceptance. Toronto got some run, with Drake and Mayor Rob Ford (pictured above) giving the Ontarian capital a few things to consider aside from the Maple Leafs’ collapse and a distinct lack of Chris Bosh in recent years. It also brought a website, born of a hellish New York morning and a few text and Facebook messages, which, we hope, you have enjoyed thus far. Now, several of us discuss 2013 in its many forms. How could 2014 ever follow this performance?

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